Vying for “Racist Douschebag of the Year”

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I give you Lou Dobbs. Click HERE for his insightful piece, “Democratic Hacks Embrace the Lunacy of Amnesty.”

This is what CNN gets when they try to outFox Fox News. “We’ll sell whatever the yokels seem to be buying.” As catchy slogans go, it doesn’t trip easily off the tongue, but apparently it’s good for ratings.

Somewhere, David Duke is baring his fangs in a feral grin.

Meanwhile, on Christmas Island…

As much as I am loathe to write about personal stuff, I’m coming off a pretty good run of days here, and wanted to jot something down so next time everything is looking all ‘Pete and Jonathan; at the Grunion; on Wednesday afternoon!’, I’ll have something to look at and go, “Wait, that’s right, things haven’t always sucked; therefore they might once again cease to suck if I just hang in there...”

So this is a note to my future self: We had a pretty good week this week. You haven’t make a howling ass out of yourself in at least seven days. If there was a support group for people like you, you could get a chip today.

The Man Cub is once again waking up half-way through the night requiring succor, but it’s usually just when I’m getting ready to call it a night anyhow, and I’m really enjoying this stage of parenting. It won’t be long before he’s not gonna want to sit in his Daddy’s lap, sucking his thumb and watching cartoons and old Sherlock Holmes movies. Or be sung back to sleep in the middle of the night.

These are the glory days.

And the trade-off seems to be he’s sleeping till 6am finally (god bless you, DST!), so I think it’s safe to say establishing – at last – a dependable sleep routine has been key to my lack of dickishness in the last week. A well-rested Fang is a well-behaved Fang. Frankly, any rigorously enforced schedule makes him feel more comfortable, especially when he’s doing the rigorous enforcing. But I digress. Or he does. What person am I writing this thing in?

The dog is slowly becoming a crumbling ruin of his former self, and he costs about as much to maintain as most crumbling ruins – like 10-15% of the GNP. But the boy likes to throw things at him and bother him when he’s eating, and I’ve gotten used to force-feeding him his current ration of 87 pills a week, so we’re continuing to bite the financial bullet. As long as he photographs well, he’s got a place in my heart and our debt equation.

I don’t talk about The Missus’ business. She has her own blog for that; and if you know me, you know where to find her online. But if I haven’t been an asshole for a week, she’s the one I haven’t been an asshole to, and she probably had a lot to do with why not, so let me just say “thanks.” It’s tough fucking work being a total prick. Don’t let Bush making it look so easy fool you. It takes some doing. No wonder he’s in bed by 9 every night – he must be beat!

So as of today, I’m very happy to report that things are cool, even though – and I’m not ashamed to admit it – one of us remains in deep denial:

Bush is scared!

He knows if them nasty Dems get his servile toadies Rove and Miers under oath, they’re either gonna have to Out the administration “big time,” or are going to perjure themselves to high heaven. I just watched his mini-press conference on offering his aides’ testimony in secret and not under oath; and what all the TV pundits are ascribing to swagger and a fire in his belly, I saw a really scared, desperate man there. He knows his little house of cards could come tumbling down around his ears if those two knuckleheads start blabbing.

And here he was, planning on riding out the last half of his last term in office just phoning it in, fucking up things here and there like the war in Iraq and the poor and the environment and stuff. Maybe some of that Vision thing that eluded his daddy... But if these birds are forced to sing, the good times really will come screeching to an end for ol’ W. Once the terrible twosome are under oath, I expect their Democratic inquisitors will find excuses to ask them about alllll kinds of things.

Instead, I’d wager Plan B is to keep their availability tied up in the legal system the rest of his term, and I’m sure that’s as good as a win in his eyes.

But a few minutes ago, I watched our Commander-in-Chief shit a brick, in public, on live TV. If I had to choose, I’d have to say that’s even less Presidential than getting a blowjob from an intern in the Oval Office.

Empire’s End

Happy Fourth Birthday, Operation Iraqi Infinitum!

Well, Dumbleyou is on TV right now, spinning and spinning and spinning away, trying desperately to polish his crusty turd of a misbegotten war into a bright shining diamond of democracy. What’s that? He’s not taking any questions? Oh that’s right, he’s on record with his opinion that as President, he’s not accountable for his actions to anyone but history (which, lucky for him, won’t pass its final judgment till long after he’s Texas-two-stepped off this mortal coil). He and his administration’s mouthpieces have said so many wildly stupid, ill-informed things in the last six years sometimes it’s an effort to remember which inaccurate prediction is appropriate to any given conversation about his term in office.

WMDs? Check. Greeted as liberators? Yup. Mission Accomplished? Oh, yeah baby! Other than throwing an election to which almost everybody showed up (mad props to the Iraqi citizenry on that one), we have fucked up every step of the way, most critically, beginning with turning our attention away from the clear and present danger in Afghanistan (which by all accounts, as a result of our inattention there, is slipping back into the same sorry condition we ‘liberated’ it from some four years ago) to the bogus threat of Iraq because our President a) has Daddy issues like you wouldn’t believe, and b) is a gullible, short-sighted, arrogant twit who surrounded himself from the start with creaking cronies from previous administrations who still had items to check off their old to-do lists.

9/11 made this President, and his ghastly miscalculation in Iraq is unmaking our country. Osama and Dumbleyou have put their pointy heads together and done in five years what the USSR couldn’t do in 50. They make such a great team, it’s hard to believe their families’ business ties only go back a couple generations.

On behalf of those of us who opposed this war from the first faint drumbeat echo, back in early 2002 when the White House was only beginning to roll out its sales plan, I’d just like to say “I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry for the thousands of American lives lost. I’m sorry for the tens of thousands of Iraqi lives lost. I’m sorry for taking a terminally unstable corner of the world and dropping a lit bomb in it.

And today, I feel myself especially sorry for every American through the ages who has ever spilt blood to keep the American dream alive – from the Minutemen shivering in the cold at Valley Forge, to Abe Lincoln, to my Dad who took shrapnel in WWII to all our brave lads and lasses in Korea, Vietnam and Gulf War I – as we sit on the precipice of the end of the idea that used to be America.

Great empires are rarely brought down from without, and ours will be no exception. We had a pretty good run, but barring an act of God, America’s day as the world’s sole super-power and guiding moral authority is as good as over. I hate to think what will replace us, because all I see ahead is anarchy, and it is armed to the teeth.

“300” review in half as many words

This movie kicks more heathen ass than I have time to craft a clever metaphor for. See it now, right away this weekend, on the big screen. Crazy sexy, luridly violent, over-the-top melodramatic, this flick is a swords & sandals epic for the ages, with more than a few allegorical interpretations to the mess our country is in today. I think right-wingers and left-wingers both could leave the theater convinced their belief structure had been validated.

But my advice is leave your politics and prejudices at the door and just dig the film craft on display here. Let’s hope this movie’s success gives the director enough clout that his next project, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ immortal “Watchmen” will make it to the big screen unmolested by Hollywood-Suit micromanaging.

Why W likes to travel abroad:

Because his reception internationally (see Sao Paulo, Brazil, above), makes his anemic 29% domestic approval rating look like he’s just won the Triple Crown, American Idol and the Megamillions jackpot by comparison.

Why I write about politics so much

(Hint: It rhymes with “schmypocrisy”)

According to a report I just ran across on USA Today online, Newt Gingrich revealed in an interview with the Rev. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family that he (Gingrich) was having an extramarital affair of his own while he led the prosecution of Monicagate in the House of Representatives in the ’90s.

That is correct… one of the guys leading the charge to impeach Bill Clinton because he had an extramarital affair and then perjured himself about it, now reveals that he was having an affair at the same time and (this is the cherry on top) is currently among the GOP chorus arguing for a pardon for Scooter Libby because ‘all he did was perjure himself.’

If your belly isn’t full yet and you have room for yet another cherry on top of the last, here’s a blurb from the website hawking Newtie’s latest self-serving tome: From the leader of the Republican revolution that swept Congress in 1994 and the author of the bestselling book, Winning the Future, comes a brand new FREE newsletter defending the values that make our country great.

“Defending the values that make our country great …” Thanks, Newtie!

Good luck with that whole ‘winning the future’ thing, being a serial philanderer and needing the Religious Right on your side to have any political future at all, because Conservative Christians are all about forgiveness when it comes to sexual infidelity. They clearly do not ‘get’ that which rhymes with schmypocrisy (complicated concept; too many commas), but they damned sure understand and have little tolerance for public figures who can’t keep their zippers locked and in the upright position.

Remember? They helped you impeach one.

Have a nice retirement.

Those Bastards!

They killed Captain America!!

Bush is SO going to pardon Libby

With the Iraq War, Katrina and now Walter Reed hanging around his legacy like a barbed-wire noose, even W is going to understand that his inevitable last-official-act of pardoning this perjuring minor player will be remembered by history as the least of his infamies. Barely rate an asterix. “Oh yeah, and in addition to bringing America to its knees on the world stage and igniting the middle east in an Apocalyptic conflict that continues to this day, he also let his VP’s stooge off the hook with a presidential pardon on the way out the door.”

Gasp!

As long as he stays mum – and he will – Scooter is gonna earn his nickname and scoot home scott free in January ’09, no matter what any silly court of law says. Bush’s profligate use of signing statements tells you all you need to know about his respect for the law, even ones he himself has just signed into effect.

Libby’s casual, devil-may-care demeanor throughout the trial is all the evidence one needs that a deal, either implicit or explicit, has already been struck. If Left and Right can agree on one thing about W, it’s that he’s a man who rewards loyalty.

And that Scooter, well he’s done a heck of a job, loyalty-wise. I smell a Presidential Medal of Freedom gift-wrapped with that pardon...!

Dreamboat Annie*

…Cyborg Annie? Replicant Annie? Annie of the Borg…?

This is your politics on drugs: A cautionary tale.

Is it libelous to accuse someone of being a rapacious, soulless, lying, contemptible media whore? I know the C-word is certainly as apropos when discussing she-whose-name–will-not-deface-my-blog, but as a gentleman, I will leave it to the ladies to cast that richly-deserved stone. I don't think it’s considered libel if it can be proved, and the hateful shrew is kind enough to repeatedly spew her putrescence in public in front of TV cameras (to wild applause from good, Christian, Values Voters crowds, of course), so I think my ass is covered, legally. Personally, I think “libel” is soft-peddling what she does for a living, but maybe I'm just being all sensitive and faggoty...

But gosh, she’s awfully clever at pushing buttons. I’m sure her book sales bump among the hateful – uh, I mean faithful – will more than make up for any loss of ad revenue her site suffers as a result of her latest media contretemps.

Personally, I’m with Keith Olberman, who consistently refers to Dreamboat Annie as a comedian, as opposed to a person to be regarded seriously by serious people. Take your standard National Socialist template (bet Annie’s not crazy about the Jews, either), add 20 pounds of pancake makeup, a blonde fright wig and increase the penis length (and girth) by about half and you’ve got your basic Dreamboat Annie model, ca. T-800.

Just the same, I say God bless America for granting AC the right to be just as vile and reprehensible as she calculates her mouth-breathing audience will lap up. Let the market prevail and the chips fall where they may. “Attention, Wal-Mart shoppers...”

*Apologies to ’70s arena rockers Heart.

Looking Ahead — Fang’s Political Prognostications 2008 (#1)

Just thinking out loud here…

It seems for a change the Dems have a stronger bench than the Republicans for the upcoming presidential competition. The GOP is counting on McCain or Guiliani at this point. As Iraq goes, so will McCain. Five years in a VC prison couldn’t break his spirit, but this year’s presidential contest got the job done in record time. Bleeeaaahh. But it’s Iraq that’ll sink his candidacy and that’s acey-ducey with me. And Guiliani has a pretty fucking sordid past to get through the primaries intact, especially the critical Southern states, and has too many douschebag moments on record before he was a genuine bad-ass on 9-11. This is a guy too wide-open to being swift-boated for the party’s Big Thinkers to gamble on. Republicans tend to be conservative in action as well as political philosophy.

If a serious Republican contender emerges and it’s not a governor, and probably from a southern state, I’ll eat my hat. But fuck those guys, they know the odds are stacked against them this next time out, thanks to W. Finally something we can be grateful to W for.

Getting back to the Dem hopefuls…

Biden: Love the guy and he could probably do the job, but his loquacious flippancy just as often as not shoots him in his own dick. That’s funny on Larry King, but it’s not something I’m looking for in a chief exec. Pass. He can mix things up better as a senator than president.

I’m convinced Barack and Hillary will fuck each other up in the next ten months, and depress the shit out of all of us true believers. I miss Howard Dean’s early candidacy. There was a “Pow” in the air when he spoke (“I want my country back! I want my country back!”) that I haven’t seen in any of the Obama/Clinton footage. She is, as has been previously noted, an automaton; and he’s ‘articulate’ enough but to me seems more calculated than inspired. Smart, smart, smart and I want that in a POTUS, but to me his star power seems a little empty. As a speaker, he’s no Bill Clinton. Maybe that’s an unreasonable bar to hold him to, but there you have it. Like him, want to love him. But Hillary’s people will have us believing he’s a vampire who feasts on human flesh by this time next year.

A special “blow me” to John Edwards. At the same Dem get-together (2002 or 2003, here on Christmas Island) that had the roof blown off by Dean’s speech, Edwards was roundly and rightly booed for being an over-the-top cheerleader for the Iraq War. I thought then, “This is just a misguided man, not a bad one. Wish he was Vice President and we weren’t even talking about invading Iraq for Christ’s sake.” But he was real belligerent about what even I knew was a bad idea and that turned me off. I admired the strength of his convictions, just not the substance. He’s saying all the right shit now, but when crunch time came, his judgment was fucked. Pass.

I like Richardson and Gore. Richardson if he can stay above the fray, and Gore if he can get in late enough to have let the front-runners destroy each others’ credibility by then. We elected him once, I’d be happy to do it again. All we’d need then is a populist Southern governor VP to carry a few southern states and we’re gold, baby.

Just as important as the candidate, though, is the strategy, and I have a winner if the Democrats would like to hear it: Run against W instead of whoever the Republican candidate is. The GOP did that in 2000 – they ran a toothsome Dumbleyou against that nasty old Bill Clinton. Remember candidate W’s oft-repeated petulant bleat, “I’ll bring honor and integrity back to the White House!” That wasn’t Gore he was talking about – no whiff of actual scandal ever attached itself to Ozone Man. No, they ran against a guy who wasn’t even running and came close enough to winning to force a court decision.

That’s a good strategy.

It’s a wicked good strategy, especially when the current two-termer has a wildly unpopular war on his hands. And it’s an awesome strategy for a Change election, which 2008 undoubtedly will be.

As far as the candidates, I worry Richardson’s folksiness might work against him – too much like W, less the inappropriate smirk, malapropisms and nervous giggle. Richardson’s a guy who could do the job, but could he be elected? The jury’s out. His national profile is nil, though that could work for him. Like Gore, Richardson has to sit this early bloodletting out as long as he possibly can to remain potentially viable. Till the money that really wins campaigns starts looking for someone undamaged to invest in.

Yeah, all this way out, Fang’s crystal ball says we should be watching Richardson and crossing our fingers for Gore. A Gore/Richardson ticket running against Iraq, cronyism and gross federal incompetence might be just the ticket…

Day Care is pissing me off, man

The Man Cub is sick. Again.

This goddamn Day Care deal just isn’t working out the way I need it to. We threw a buttload of money at them for February, a short month to begin with, but if he’s attended even half the scheduled days I’d be surprised.

And what’s really pissing me off is the reason he’s not attending is that he’s always fucking sick! He was never sick before day care, and from our first experience on, it’s been nothing but varying levels of running noses, hacking coughs and lackluster cuteness.

They tell me (not the Day Care providers, “they” they) that this shit will build up his immune system in the long run and that that’s a good thing. I thought it was a pretty good goddamn thing when he wasn’t sick a day in his life before matriculating to Day Care.

When I picked him up (from the Day Care place) last time, one little girl in a high chair seemed to have her whole face smeared with equal parts whatever gruel she was eating and runny nose product. It was disgusting. The Man Cub was just on the rebound from the last virus he caught there, which had been preceded by an ear infection that first manifested at the Day Care center. Then there was the doctor-mandated follow-up visit that took him out of yet more Day Care.

For all of those times he’s had to be taken out, Mr. Mom has had to don his apron strings again. Is it a coincidence that I repeatedly make stupid, sloppy mistakes like fucking up folios on my various publications like I did this week, “Friday, February 28”? I think not. It’s pretty hard to concentrate on the job when you’ve always got at least one eye and ear out for your sick son at any given moment. Then I feel guilty I don’t have both eyes and ears on him...

And it’s not a reflection on The Missus that I’m doing most of the shlepping around – she’s got a cool new big-money job, according to Plan, and it’s important to make a good impression like for example by showing up reliably for the first few months of your employment. I’m the stay-at-home dad, and I always knew this sort of responsibility would fall mostly on me.

I just thought I’d be able to handle it better. Maybe more gracefully. Definitely with less petulance.

And tomorrow morning, I either have to take the boy back to the Day Care petri dish for another harrowing day of rolling around in other kids’ slimy germs and cut them another huge check because oh yeah, they don’t do make-up days: you pay for your month, hey, maybe we’ll give you five or six days, depending on how ill we make your child. You miss a day here and there, you miss a day. What choo gonna do? Or the poor little bastard will be too sick and I’ll either have to keep him home with me on a huge work day, or keep him home with me and run him to the doctor on a huge work day. Again.

I guess I’ll give it till after the cold and rainy season out here on Christmas Island, where every day is Christmas but not everyone gets a gift. Lots of adults I know who don’t have any contact with Day Care are sick, too. They just aren’t paying through the nose for the privilege. And none of those other sick motherfuckers is my son, either.

It sure was easier to know what to do when life was simple.